


love (the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket)

by singalellaby



Category: Avengers (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singalellaby/pseuds/singalellaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The look of utter surprise and pained 'I am grateful for your love confession, but it doesn't make the fact that I've been tortured quite go away, and also there's an attacker approaching fast at your eleven o'clock' distraction almost makes the broken bow worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love (the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionlannister](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionlannister/gifts).



> Written for the "great writers steal" ficathon on LJ, for the prompt "Marvel + Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton + "Sorry about the blood in your mouth, I wish it was mine.""

Clint finds him in bad shape, and that's saying something because the dude only had one arm to start with. One real arm, anyway. They've taken his prosthetic, ripped it from him to leave an ugly emptiness in a way that offends an eye that automatically looks for bilateral symmetry in a person.

It's not the only thing they've taken from him.

"Sorry," Bucky mumbles as he leans awkwardly against Clint. He weighs more than Clint does, even armless, and when he speaks a light spray of blood fans over Clint's cheek from the gaping holes he can see in his gums. Clint very deliberately doesn't try to remember how much that particular method of torture hurts in his own experience and works on freeing Bucky's one remaining wrist from which he's been suspended. That has to kill as well, all of his weight dragging down on that one joint...

"Don't mention it," he grunts and he means it. It was meant to be him here, on this op, was meant to be him who'd been caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and at least he doesn't have an arm chock full of desirable technology for them to bother wrenching away. His is a body positively lacking in secrets as far as Avengers go and if it wasn't completely useless to be wracked with guilt on a fly by the seat of your pants rescue mission, Clint would have been kicking himself by now. "Just buy me a drink after. And, actually, a new bow, some _fucker_ cracked mine." With his face. When Clint hit him with it. But that's not the fucking point, even if he just knows that Natasha is going to kick his ass later for how sloppy and poorly-planned a job this is.

The manacle slips and Bucky collapses against him. That has to hurt like a bitch, but he just chuckles brokenly and sags against Clint, all blood-soaked skin and knotted muscles. There's a tight bundle of something just behind Clint's breastbone and he shoves his shoulder under that one remaining arm, lips tight as he resigns himself to the ugly truth of not even being able to give him a moment to catch his breath because he can already here pounding feet echoing off decreasingly far away corridor walls.

Bucky mumbles something and Clint strains to catch it, but still misses it. "What?"

Another hoarse bark of laughter, mirthless and spraying more blood around. "S'good. That you care so much for her. Riskin' your life to come and get me, I mean."

And there's probably half a dozen armed guards bearing down on them, with Clint's only current equipment being a broken bow and a broken Winter Soldier, and _still_ he yips in slightly manic amusement and hefts Bucky more securely against his shorter frame. "Barnes, Stark is right. You're an absolute fucking _moron_ if you think I only did this because 'Tasha asked me to." He casts him a brief look - scornful and defiant and challengingly honest because, hey, it's entirely possible they're both about to die and who the hell has time for embarrassment when death's staring you in the face again? - and squeezes his hip. "I'm here for you, moron."

The look of utter surprise and pained 'I am grateful for your love confession, but it doesn't make the fact that I've been tortured quite go away, and also there's an attacker approaching fast at your eleven o'clock' distraction almost makes the broken bow worth it.


End file.
